Idk, maybe it’s just that I’m comparing too much of the Witcher 3, but the story and importantly sidequests in Horizon Zero Dawn are mediocore at best for where I’m at atm. I’d concur it’s better than Bethesda though.
The Witcher 3, to me, made Bethesda games feel dated. The structure of the game is nearly identical, but when you arrive at your quest, it never plays out entirely straight forward, much like the Witcher source material. Cyberpunk does follow along those same lines, even if it never quite hit the highs that Witcher 3 did.
HZD is very Ubisofty, but done right, as in it’s not littered to the brink with pointless collectibles and can actually be completed. It’s way more action than role-play or story focussed but that’s not a bad thing in itself. I think of it more like Tomb Raider, and for that kind of game HZD has plenty and very good storytelling.
When you work on something for longer than 5 years, the tech and expectations from competing games will run ahead of you.
And you can’t just rewrite the story and engine and map and characters every time you get delayed.
So you should just shoot every AAA project that lags more than 5 years on the spot. It’s way too late for it at that time. And start from market analysis, not just rewriting everything in the ‘current engine and style’.
This is such a weird take because Cyberpunk's storytelling was a series of Grand Theft Auto phone calls occasionally interspersed with "UR DYING V, I'M KEANU REEVES AND IM GONNA TAKE UR BODY LOL". There wasn't anything interesting about Cyberpunk's storytelling. I believe a Bethesda game could be more boring than that, but it doesn't retroactively make Cyberpunk great as a result.
It blows my mind that people praise cyberpunk. They skipped straight past the character building and introduction to the city and its characters with a fucking 30 second cutscene, and then you just start getting calls from people you’ve never met like they know you. It didn’t interest me at all.
Ah so they didn’t just blow past the city and character introductions with a cutscene and then you start getting calls from fixers you don’t know, who talk to you like you have an existing relationship?
Tell me more about the incredible storyline that introduced you to the city and its inhabitants at the start
Mine was “car chase for a lizard” then the guy I just met dies, who was apparently my best friend because we played 2 missions together
V, someone in their twenties, maybe early thirties, had no life, friends, or business acquaintances or knowledge of the city before the player comes into the story.
I suppose the game should have been 25 hours longer so you could have a sit down meeting with each fixer, get to know them, maybe have some tea with them. Maybe a walking tour of Night City so that everything is spelled out for you would help?
People spent 8 years making Cyberpunk their entire personality. Of course they are going to make it seem like the best thing since stuffed crust pizza.
Ah not liking something makes me the bad guy because apparently it’s my whole personality.
Nope. Just talking about something in the thread where there’s a discussion about it. Happens to be I agree with many others that it was an overhead disappointment propped up by marketing money.
Felt the same way about it. The plot device of the character potentially becoming Keanu really broke all motivation for me. Why would I complete the main plot if each mission made the infestation worse? I made this character, why would I be interested in watching them become someone else’s Gary Stue? I wanted to be my Gary, not theirs.
The story would have been much improved by dropping Johnny Mnemonic Silverhands and instead having the partner, whose name escapes me because I only got to know him through 2 missions and a 30 second montage of us getting to know each other, as the ride along personality. Instead of him taking you over, he’s fading away and you have to save him.
Throw in a heroic sacrifice from your semi AI partner at the end or a plot twist him into a villain Tyler Durdening your ass while you sleep and it could have been something magical.
The theme of cyberpunk is that you have a literal anti corp terrorist in your head, and how that is affecting V’s psyche. Like there are points in the game where you choose some dialogue options and the game is like “is that V’s opinion or Johnny’s”.
I think they should have not played up the “if left unchecked, he’s going to kill you” sense of urgency bit though. But basically every open world game has the same problem with how do you reconcile having an open world, but also have a plot that needs moved forward. Like they can’t just outright game over you if you just do side quests for a in-game week or so.
That’s where starfield actually gets it right. You aren’t the “chosen one”, you are just a guy. The main plot of the game has no sense of urgency, because it’s fully driven by how much you dig into the artifact mystery. Any one in constellation could be doing the same things you are doing, and getting the powers and finding more artifacts, they all have seen the same visions you have when they first touched one. Again, you aren’t special.
Bethesda has put themselves in an awkward spot by promoting niche and deep RPG mechanics for so long, and then becoming such a AAA developer with entire keynotes dedicated to previewing them that they no longer want to risk making deeper complex mechanics because they’re scared of “confusing” the base audience.
I want to say they need to take Starfield as a wakeup call, in comparison to games like BG3. But they don’t need to, because Gamepass numbers are practically imaginary sales numbers, and we’re just going to hear about how well it sold for the next half-decade.
This article speaks right out of my soul, when comparing Starfield and Cyberpunk 2077 2.0.
The quest qualtiy itself is comparable, but the delivery of Starfield makes it solely my job to create immersion (which I can and will do), while Cyberpunk 2077 2.0 grabs me by my balls and drags me into the world.
Spoiler for a small quest in CyberpunkWhen the barkeeper leans slightly forward, looks carefully right and left to make sure no one is listening and then tells me he suspects his wife sees someone else, I smell his parfume and I notice he relaxes his hurting back by stemming his arms onto the desk, because he is doing a double shift. Having Silverhand commenting on every step of the quest and turning it into a noir detctive story, making fun of me, added more immersion to a “follow person, report back”-mission. That I then can just call the quest giver on the phone, as a normal being would feels life like.
A similar quest in Starfield:
I talked to the barkeeper in Starfield from the wrong angle and he only turned his head and it was very uncanny valley, because over the whole conversation I was questioning how he can still talk with a broken neck.
I talked to the barkeeper in Starfield from the wrong angle and he only turned his head and it was very uncanny valley, because over the whole conversation I was questioning how he can still talk with a broken neck.
They might have fixed it by now but a certain little fortune teller has a very similar issue in an elevator in cyberpunk.
After helping him out I had a certain Ripperdoc showing which arm he operates with by raising it. Only his arm rotated backwards as if his elbow was turned around 180 degrees, arm clipping through his biceps.
But at least in Cyberpunk I’ve got the feeling that a bug like this is an honest oversight, whereas Starfield gives me the feeling that Creation Engine (2.0 these days?) should have have been killed, burned and buried after Skyrim. Each game since (and including) Oblivion I’ve felt like I’m looking at limitations I already noticed in the previous game built with Creation Engine or NetImmerse/GameBryo.
I haven’t played starfield and don’t intend to but I played cyberpunk on launch thanks to a covid scare and even on launch it was a good game to me. Had it’s problems but I got 300 hours out of it before the year ended.
Questgiver: “Hello, I don’t know you stranger, and I don’t trust outsiders. Can I help you? Oh, you want a quest? This evil company in Neon does bad shit and I need you to inject this virus and make sure it doesn’t get back to me. Also, the mayor here is evil AF. Don’t say that out loud, he has ears everywhere. I trust you stranger with my life. Have 8000 creds for picking up my mail, and 2000 creds and a unique purple gun for blowing up half of the city.”
They’re good at that. I remember trying Skyrim when it was new and we all didn’t know there would be like 15 rereleases and it felt weirdly dated. I couldn’t really put my finger on why, it just felt old.
I've been seeing a ton of cyberpunk ads since starfield was released just shitting on starfield and talking up cyberpunk. This seems like a smear campaign. Frankly if your a fan of sci Fi and video games. You should probably try both when they're on sale.
Cyberpunk put ALL their money into marketing, and they’re heavily investor-pressured into showing the game is better received than it actually is. I still firmly believe that a large percentage of the praise is astroturfing. Especially when they downvote everything negative without a response
Ok here’s a response. I pirated cyberpunk on release fully expecting it to be buggy. I enjoyed bits of it at the time but I stopped because it was too buggy and unpolished.
This is CD Project Red’s track record, but somehow everyone forgot about how bad Witcher 3 was. I expected this 2.0 update eventually and I’m glad they started another marketing push, so that I can know it’s time for the game to actually be ‘done’. Obviously they paid streamers to show the game, that’s no secret. But also it looks genuinely better, just like Witcher 3. So I’ll probably actually buy it next time it goes on sale, after pirating it to see if it’s worth it now.
Meanwhile Starfield looks exactly like the milktoast Skyrim reskin I expected it to be, with nothing really standing out. Bethesda has been slowly comodifying their games since Morrowind -> Oblivion then followed an obvious template since Skyrim. It really shows in their boring designs.
Cyberpunk was trying to do too much, but Starfield isn’t doing enough.
Fair point about starfield, I haven’t played it yet but have heard many negative things.
But your point about cyberpunk, in response to me is “It was too buggy to enjoy on release and I haven’t played the late, updated version” , but you’re glad it’s being marketed on every platform?
The only thing I don’t like about Cyberpunk’s writing is that everyone seems to be deathly allergic to pronouns, even when it would clearly make the dialogue flow better.
I’m talking more about the dialogue between V and other characters where they just adamantly refuse to begin sentences with the words I/me/my/etc. It begins to wear after a while.
Well, the player can choose which gender V is, plus there’s a lot of catering to gender fluidity.
It’s definitely a conscious choice, but I can’t say if it’s to not have to record more variations of dialogue, and maybe NPC’s use it less so not to draw attention to them not knowing V’s gender.
That said, nothing that really bothered me, although I still haven’t gone through the entire game.
But maybe it’s just how they picture 2077? Just look at recent history and draw an exponential curve and assume pronouns just went out of fashion?
I mean, it really doesn’t have anything to do with V’s gender, it’s literally just that they start every sentence like, for example, “…Thought” or “…Look like” instead of “I thought” or “You look like,” even when the VO is enunciating in a way that sounds much more emphatic than the dropped pronouns would imply? It makes the dialogue feel kind of disjointed at times.
Granted, I’m using the female V voice, I have no idea if the male VO runs into the same problems, but I imagine they’re reading off of the same script, so it seems likely.
Ffs buddy, learn to let it go. I mentioned the two games in my previous comments already. Then I mentioned I would like an actual Starcraft 3 from Blizzard. You don’t need to point me at anything, just accept someone else wishing for something and move on.
That was just part of it. The entire tech sector massively retracted after the boom it saw during COVID, which is also responsible for the sudden enshittification of so many different products/services all at once.
Yup. They can’t take out interest-free loans to pay off their almost-interest-free loans. So now they’re scrambling to save money and build value the old fashioned way.
People with lots of money want even more money. Less employees means less money that has to be paid out which means more money in the short term. Makes line go up for a while. Makes suits happy.
The only thing happening in the industry is the same thing happening in every industry and most of the first world:
The wealthy owners and executive leader roles have learned that COVID, COVID supply lines, interest rates, ‘consumer sentiment’, and inflation, are all very easy scapegoats that both the public and investors will easily buy as reasons for lowering product quality and availability, while also firing employees, squeezing the non-fired ones to death, and raising prices. This has lead to almost 2 straight years of corporations showing record profits (even adjusting for the inflation that they are largely responsible for in the first place).
This downward spiral will continue until some force with nearly as much power pushes back.
This is typically and ideally a representative government in the form of regulation or taxation. But the US government has suffered decades of regulatory capture and congressional gridlock.
So the only other potential option is a large amount of highly populated unions. Which have to fight against nearly 100 years of media and political demonization and nearly 150 years of ‘american independent attitude’.
The perfect modern system has all 3 parties; unions, government, and corporations, equally strong and antagonistic. Just as the perfect modern government would have the executive, legislative, and judicial branches equally strong and antagonistic. Neither could be much farther from the case here.
Stronger bigger unions. Weaker smaller corporations. And a government that actually functions. All are necessary to fix our current shit show.
It already happened, at least on Mediatonic (Fall Guys), a subsidiary. They axed lots of game designers, the UI/UX designer, some other people and even the person who made all the promo art
Activision Blizzard has become such a huge pile of disgusting shit that people are quite tempted to see what would happen if the devil Microsoft buys it.
Yeah, never thought I’d live the day to see it but here we are. Blizzard use to be the darling of all gamers, only one who did things right and released games when they were actually done. Then money hungry shitheads took over.
I’m just happy to potentially see Bobby Kotick, Ion Hazzikostas, Mike Ybarra, etc ousted.
Don’t get me wrong. Fifteen years ago I would have flipped if Microsoft put in a bid to buy Vivendi and get their paws on Blizzard, after seeing how badly they ruined Rare. Activision tanked the brand so bad that I’m actually rooting for Microsoft.
I don’t think Kotick is at all certain to be kicked out. As easily as I can see MS letting him go with an enormous golden parachute, I can just as easily imagine them keeping him onboard because all they care about is Activision’s ability to make money.
In all likelihood Blizzard isn’t going to be managed any differently. Microsoft’s modus operandi with gaming acquisitions is to leave the leadership in place and let the dev/publisher run itself. Why is everyone expecting different here? The most likely outcome is MS does nothing to Blizzard and Blizzard continues on more or less the same trajectory as before.
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Aktywne